On 12/8/05, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
While we're all speaking out of our butts, let me add that simply explicating that by submitting to Wikipedia you're willing to accept authorship credit under the collective name of "Wikipedia contributors" would likely handle any legal considerations.
The legal consideration is about the license Wikipedia uses, the GFDL, and is a question about what sorts of requirements it puts upon uses of the text. It is not a terribly difficult document to understand for the most part even without legal training.
Personally I think most of the discussions here are in relation to the fact that the GFDL was really designed to work with software manuals more than anything else, if I recall. I don't think it really works perfectly for a wiki encyclopedia, much less all of the different formats of media we have on it (sound, images, etc.).
My crystal-ball prediction is that someday we'll end up with a modified (though GFDL-compatible) license, WFDL or something like that, more tailored to our needs. But of course we don't know all of our current much less future needs, so it would be hasty to worry about that too much now, I think.
As an aside, I'm not sure trying to make MediaWiki bend backwards to accommodate the GFDL's more intricate interpretations is the right way to go either.
FF